PROCEEDINGS OF THE GROUP MEETING ON WHITEFLIES AND EMERGING CHALLENGES

A group meeting on whiteflies was organized jointly by the Out Reach Programme on Sucking pests of Horticultural Crops (ORP-SP) and the Association for Advancement of Pest Management in Horticultural Ecosystems (AAPMHE) on the 17th May, 2010  at  Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bangalore. About 60 participants comprising scientists from networking centers of the ORP-SP, different ICAR institutes and State Agricultural Universities, students and representatives from private sector participated in the meeting. The meeting deliberated on various aspects of emerging problems due to whiteflies both as pests and vectors. The meeting came out with several recommendations and the major ones include preparing a whitefly distribution map, strengthening research on insecticide resistance and biotypes of whitefly transmitted diseases and encouraging systematics, both traditional and molecular. The detailed proceedings are presented in this paper.